4 ms·

Yes, but CTR and conversion metrics still matter to ad buyers. It's much more difficult to measure the influence on my subconscious and attribute that.

lll-o-lll 4y ago
Is it though? Television ads worked for years without any direct feedback. I assume a company can just look at before and after revenue…
jrockway 4y ago
I think that there is some weird effect in the ad business where this isn't the case. Look at sponsorships or untargeted ads; Red Bull may sponsor someone jumping out of a balloon at the edge of space, but it's probably hard to convert that investment to a number of extra cans of energy drink sold. I see a lot of video ads like that in the same way. Everyone watching Overwatch League is just there idling for in-game rewards for watch time and probably have no idea who the sponsors are. And, all these children inflating YouTube view counts because the thumbnail has a weird face they can't resist clicking, aren't buying razor blade subscriptions or workstation monitoring systems that the video sponsors are advertising. (Hi Linus.) I could never figure out if advertisers don't know what's going on, or they merely don't want to know. I get the feeling that companies value brand perception so heavily they don't know they're getting ripped off by the distribution networks. Or, individual ad executives just want people to talk about their ad at the water cooler, so don't purchase ads to most efficiently use their employer's marketing budget, but rather maximize impressions to inflate their personal brand. Like I said, I don't know; maybe everyone knows about all of these things and they think untracked ad impressions are worth what they're paying. It's a mystery to me, but I'm somewhat surprised the traditional ad industry is alive and well. (The really insidious new form of advertising are paid endorsements and rigged reviews. If you search for "best X 2023", 100% of the results are ads presented as research. Truly evil and ruined ... everything.)
- kenhwang 4y ago
  I work in adtech, and built a product tried to measure the impact of advertising, that Google/Facebook/Twitter all immediately copied. So going to answer from my experience. > I could never figure out if advertisers don't know what's going on This is largely not true. The big advertisers all have a pretty good idea of which spends were accomplishing their goals better than others. It's the goals that might not be obvious from the outside; everyone always assumes click-through or call-to-actions but for the big spenders that tends to be pretty low on the priorities list. > , or they merely don't want to know. This is also true. So while everyone knows what the underperforming ad products are, no advertising executive wants to be the one sticking their neck out doing the work proving advertising _doesn't_ work. That's their livelihood, once you question the necessity of an established market leader, you're more likely to invite question the necessity of you instead. Is it "Google advertising doesn't work" or "you don't know how to make Google advertising work"? > I get the feeling that companies value brand perception so heavily they don't know they're getting ripped off by the distribution networks. When we asked major advertisers and agencies what their top priorities were: all of them put brand safety at the top of the list. Above reach, above cost efficiency, above click through, above conversions. Brand perception is a subcomponent of brand safety. It takes years to build up good brand perception and very few mistakes to undo that progress. > Or, individual ad executives just want people to talk about their ad at the water cooler, so don't purchase ads to most efficiently use their employer's marketing budget, but rather maximize impressions to inflate their personal brand. Most ad executives never hear much about their ad campaigns. But if they do at the water cooler in a positive light, you've probably made their whole career. > Like I said, I don't know; maybe everyone knows about all of these things and they think untracked ad impressions are worth what they're paying. It's a mystery to me, but I'm somewhat surprised the traditional ad industry is alive and well. Tracked ad impressions are relatively a very new thing for this very old industry. Generally at the scale advertising works at, they don't need full comprehensive impression tracking to know if they're accomplishing their generally unambitious goals, it's easy enough to get a representative sample and extrapolate with statistics. If you're trying to sell something, it's way easier just tracking how many sales you got than trying to divine how impressions and click through rates could impact sales. There's a bunch of A/B testing going on with how campaign spends are broken out. Different products or regions can be intentionally left unadvertised to use as control to measure effectiveness. Basically there's a lot of data (and very few it from the adtech platforms themselves, since they had to know this before the era of digital advertising) that supports advertising as a whole works really damn well, and most of the work is just determining what advertising strategies are working better than others. Plus, the data from Google/Facebook is largely junk anyway (same as everyone else to be fair). Just check out your advertising profile on those respective sites. You'll probably get a big laugh on the accuracy of your interests.
- pfraze 4y ago
  What you're missing is the effect of brand visibility on people's internal thought processes. When you see something regularly, you internally gain a sense of permanence about the item as if it's a naturally-occurring part of the environment. This creates a floor for the brand's perception. It may not be a "I'll go out and buy it now" floor or even an "I'll choose that brand when a purchase decision is made" floor, but it will certainly be "I've heard of that brand" and possibly even "that brand is probably the market leader." For products which are undifferentiated, or for which buyers lack deep insight, that can be a strong advantage. It's also not an entirely logic-free assumption to make. If a brand can afford prominent and consistent advertising over a multi-year period then you can reasonably assume that it's making enough money to sustain its existence. That makes a costly, long-running ad campaign a decent proxy signal for market strength and/or social proof. Is it 100% accurate? Definitely not, but none of this behavior by the consumer or the advertiser is logic-free.
- linkjuice4all 4y ago
  There’s a couple of different reasons that this happens. - Things like Red Bull events are for general awareness and can provide a source of content that is used on other platforms. This is similar to TV or billboard advertising where you can’t measure direct impact but it’s getting eyes on your brand. There’s also the element of “we’re a big important company and you can tell because we wasted all of this money” - In some cases brands buy a package of ad space from an agency and don’t pick where it shows up - the agency is supposed to fill ad space in front of the desired audience but can’t find enough inventory. Rather than give the money back and have a smaller budget to renew next quarter they dump it in lower quality spots. - Some advertising is also defensive in that you’re denying space that your competitors can buy - Occasionally brands will get a discount for a larger ad buy knowing that the ads will show up in lower performing locations - but they still got the bulk discount - In some cases people just screw up and don’t manage budgeting, retargeting, frequency, or other limits so the automated systems find somewhere/anywhere to show the ad since the platform is guaranteeing some amount of visibility - Content placement is definitely on the shittier end of ad quality but it can be much cheaper or may be included as part of an ad package for a specific site or publisher Generally advertising seems to be a net negative and the increase in ad space drives down costs so ad platforms need more ad buys and more advertisers to fill the ever-growing inventory but how else are you going to tell people about your product at scale?

lll-o-lll 4y ago

Is it though? Television ads worked for years without any direct feedback. I assume a company can just look at before and after revenue…

jrockway 4y ago

I think that there is some weird effect in the ad business where this isn't the case. Look at sponsorships or untargeted ads; Red Bull may sponsor someone jumping out of a balloon at the edge of space, but it's probably hard to convert that investment to a number of extra cans of energy drink sold. I see a lot of video ads like that in the same way. Everyone watching Overwatch League is just there idling for in-game rewards for watch time and probably have no idea who the sponsors are. And, all these children inflating YouTube view counts because the thumbnail has a weird face they can't resist clicking, aren't buying razor blade subscriptions or workstation monitoring systems that the video sponsors are advertising. (Hi Linus.) I could never figure out if advertisers don't know what's going on, or they merely don't want to know. I get the feeling that companies value brand perception so heavily they don't know they're getting ripped off by the distribution networks. Or, individual ad executives just want people to talk about their ad at the water cooler, so don't purchase ads to most efficiently use their employer's marketing budget, but rather maximize impressions to inflate their personal brand. Like I said, I don't know; maybe everyone knows about all of these things and they think untracked ad impressions are worth what they're paying. It's a mystery to me, but I'm somewhat surprised the traditional ad industry is alive and well. (The really insidious new form of advertising are paid endorsements and rigged reviews. If you search for "best X 2023", 100% of the results are ads presented as research. Truly evil and ruined ... everything.)

kenhwang 4y ago
I work in adtech, and built a product tried to measure the impact of advertising, that Google/Facebook/Twitter all immediately copied. So going to answer from my experience. > I could never figure out if advertisers don't know what's going on This is largely not true. The big advertisers all have a pretty good idea of which spends were accomplishing their goals better than others. It's the goals that might not be obvious from the outside; everyone always assumes click-through or call-to-actions but for the big spenders that tends to be pretty low on the priorities list. > , or they merely don't want to know. This is also true. So while everyone knows what the underperforming ad products are, no advertising executive wants to be the one sticking their neck out doing the work proving advertising _doesn't_ work. That's their livelihood, once you question the necessity of an established market leader, you're more likely to invite question the necessity of you instead. Is it "Google advertising doesn't work" or "you don't know how to make Google advertising work"? > I get the feeling that companies value brand perception so heavily they don't know they're getting ripped off by the distribution networks. When we asked major advertisers and agencies what their top priorities were: all of them put brand safety at the top of the list. Above reach, above cost efficiency, above click through, above conversions. Brand perception is a subcomponent of brand safety. It takes years to build up good brand perception and very few mistakes to undo that progress. > Or, individual ad executives just want people to talk about their ad at the water cooler, so don't purchase ads to most efficiently use their employer's marketing budget, but rather maximize impressions to inflate their personal brand. Most ad executives never hear much about their ad campaigns. But if they do at the water cooler in a positive light, you've probably made their whole career. > Like I said, I don't know; maybe everyone knows about all of these things and they think untracked ad impressions are worth what they're paying. It's a mystery to me, but I'm somewhat surprised the traditional ad industry is alive and well. Tracked ad impressions are relatively a very new thing for this very old industry. Generally at the scale advertising works at, they don't need full comprehensive impression tracking to know if they're accomplishing their generally unambitious goals, it's easy enough to get a representative sample and extrapolate with statistics. If you're trying to sell something, it's way easier just tracking how many sales you got than trying to divine how impressions and click through rates could impact sales. There's a bunch of A/B testing going on with how campaign spends are broken out. Different products or regions can be intentionally left unadvertised to use as control to measure effectiveness. Basically there's a lot of data (and very few it from the adtech platforms themselves, since they had to know this before the era of digital advertising) that supports advertising as a whole works really damn well, and most of the work is just determining what advertising strategies are working better than others. Plus, the data from Google/Facebook is largely junk anyway (same as everyone else to be fair). Just check out your advertising profile on those respective sites. You'll probably get a big laugh on the accuracy of your interests.
pfraze 4y ago
What you're missing is the effect of brand visibility on people's internal thought processes. When you see something regularly, you internally gain a sense of permanence about the item as if it's a naturally-occurring part of the environment. This creates a floor for the brand's perception. It may not be a "I'll go out and buy it now" floor or even an "I'll choose that brand when a purchase decision is made" floor, but it will certainly be "I've heard of that brand" and possibly even "that brand is probably the market leader." For products which are undifferentiated, or for which buyers lack deep insight, that can be a strong advantage. It's also not an entirely logic-free assumption to make. If a brand can afford prominent and consistent advertising over a multi-year period then you can reasonably assume that it's making enough money to sustain its existence. That makes a costly, long-running ad campaign a decent proxy signal for market strength and/or social proof. Is it 100% accurate? Definitely not, but none of this behavior by the consumer or the advertiser is logic-free.
linkjuice4all 4y ago
There’s a couple of different reasons that this happens. - Things like Red Bull events are for general awareness and can provide a source of content that is used on other platforms. This is similar to TV or billboard advertising where you can’t measure direct impact but it’s getting eyes on your brand. There’s also the element of “we’re a big important company and you can tell because we wasted all of this money” - In some cases brands buy a package of ad space from an agency and don’t pick where it shows up - the agency is supposed to fill ad space in front of the desired audience but can’t find enough inventory. Rather than give the money back and have a smaller budget to renew next quarter they dump it in lower quality spots. - Some advertising is also defensive in that you’re denying space that your competitors can buy - Occasionally brands will get a discount for a larger ad buy knowing that the ads will show up in lower performing locations - but they still got the bulk discount - In some cases people just screw up and don’t manage budgeting, retargeting, frequency, or other limits so the automated systems find somewhere/anywhere to show the ad since the platform is guaranteeing some amount of visibility - Content placement is definitely on the shittier end of ad quality but it can be much cheaper or may be included as part of an ad package for a specific site or publisher Generally advertising seems to be a net negative and the increase in ad space drives down costs so ad platforms need more ad buys and more advertisers to fill the ever-growing inventory but how else are you going to tell people about your product at scale?